This holiday season, since around Thanksgiving time, I’ve been shoulding all over the place. I should be doing this, and shouldn’t be doing that. I should be writing or I should be resting or I should be working or I should be doing…anything other than I am. And on and on. And on. Exhausting. I, in fact, created such an enormous pile of should that I practically buried myself under it. But as a reached my arm out through the mound built around me I realized…it’s time to clean some should up.

Should, as I’ve announced from my soapbox in the past, is really my least favorite word in the English language. It feels rigid, bossy, and deeply judgmental. We react aggressively to should, rather than respond gently to it. When someone, including our own inner voice, shoulds us, we enter the dangerous zone of questioning ourselves from all angles. Am I doing something wrong? Am I choosing wrong? Am I being wrong? Should I do, choose, be…different?

An active shoulding practice is not a modern phenomenon. We humans have been shoulding forever with no boundaries of age, religion, race, or gender. Shoulding is human and well, should happens. But why?

The thing about shoulding is that it’s the grand outcome of a recipe made up of…What other people want from us, what we think other people want from us, what we want other people to think of us, and what we truly want. Combined: all you got is a pile of should. Got that sweet thing? Ya, I know…read that a few more times, I’m not goin’ anywhere.

There is no particular order that the ingredients for the should-recipe are added and no particular amount of each necessary. For each person it’s different, depending on the nature you were born with and the nurture you were raised with.

Regardless of each persons recipe combination though, the goal is the same; to separate, extract, and differentiate each ingredient. To see what your should is really made of.

Get curious about the parts of your should. What part of it is an expectation from another person? What part is coming from your authentic self? Are there parts that are simply assumptions of what you think others want you to be? What about that part coming from your ego wanting people to think you are a certain kind of person? Ya, that’s the stuff.

Listen, I don’t know what you should or shouldn’t be doing, and so on. And maybe, when it comes down to it, you should be, well, doing that thing. But who knows? What I do know is that when we should ourselves, or get shoulded on, we become entranced and even a little obsessed with the content of the should, that we don’t allow ourselves to submerge and participate in what it is that we are doing or who we actually are. We are missing the moment…we are literally letting should, weigh us down.

So, a new resolution for 2010: Clean it up a bit…figure out what your should is made of, get curious about it, question it, and just try…try to stop shoulding all over yourself.

Love,

There’s an interesting little social battle between the words, selfish and selfless. Everyone wants to be called selfless. Supposedly, selfless people are the nice people. God forbid someone calls you selfish, right?

It’s become understood in our society that selfish is the name you get called after a fight, or in the midst of one. And selfless is the name you get called when someone is complimenting your human-hood. I’m not so into these being the only options. It’s like only having the choice of a crappy unhealthy fast food restaurant, and a ridiculously pricey vegan bistro. There can’t be just selfish and selfless. We’re missing a few levels.

I’m in the business of thinking about things, ideas, experiences, emotions, and words. So, here I go, doing my job again. Let’s pick apart selfish and selfless…This is so much fun I can hardly stand it.

OK, Selfish. Self is of course, my favorite part of the word. Hopefully by now you, my loving gorgeous Soapbox readers, know what capital S, Self means. But just in case…Self is all of it, all of you, all of your deliciousness inside, all of the real you, your inner gold and your inner core, all of your million complex parts. Ok, sorry, I get excited about the Self stuff.

And what about this whole ish thing? According to the dictionary “ish” is a suffix used to form adjectives from nouns, with the sense of “belonging to”…

So, selfish means, belonging to your Self. Moving on…

The word selfless really freaks me out. I mean, think about it. Self. Less. Less of yourself. Oye. That’s my most scary thought. Everything I talk about, every passionate moment on my Soapbox is about inviting yourself and your Self in. So, extreme selflessness is on a really scary road towards, well, self-gone.

So, now what? We don’t want to be too selfish, ‘cause we are part of a whole world here. And if we’re too selfless, we begin to lose ourselves. What to do, what to do.

It seems that many peoples cure to selfishness is to become ferociously selfless. And when people are so selfless that they start to lose themselves, they fantasize about doing things only for them, and that’s it. Why either/or? Neither really get me excited.

So, imagine a chart. At the top is Selfish. Then all the way on the other end… Selfless. There is a ton of space in-between, just waiting to be filled with color and texture and balance and the in-between.

There are so many unbelievably important levels of selfishness and selflessness. Surprise…there is healthy selfishness. And there is a reasonable and beautiful level of selflessness.

The thing about the battle between selfish and selfless is that it’s actually not a battle at all…they work best when they work together. I say, invite them both into your world. Let them balance each other out, intertwine, dance. I’m so over the either/or way of living…

Consider rethinking your black and white thinking. The relationship between selfishness and selflessness is such a great example of how life, pretty much all the time, leaves space for color. I call non-black and white thinking, “the color” rather than “the gray area” …and one day I’ll tell you why. But for now, just live in the rainbow. Go with it, invite it all in.

Be selfish sometimes…after all, you do belong to yourself in so many beautiful ways. And, of course, you want to prepare your strong fabulous self to be selfless sometimes…because after all, losing yourself in service and love for others feels pretty damn good.

And that’s the thing about the battle between selfish and selfless…

Love,

Respect is a word constantly in the airwaves, regularly thrown around, and continuously repeated in any situation a person feels they deserve, well, respect. Respect is also a word often taken at face value with no definition attached, to the point of, in my opinion, a fault. So, in the spirit of being on my soapbox and scooping out the meaning of things until there’s nothing left to scoop…I want to give a little tutorial… a little mini-lesson if you will… on the big-heavy-could be amazing if we actually knew what it meant and used it properly-word, respect. So, with respect, here I go…

There are two parts to the word Respect. “re” and “spect”. Let’s start with “re”.

“Re” is a prefix meaning ‘again’ or ‘again and again’, suggesting repetition. Easy enough.

“Spect” can be found in many words, for example spectacle meaning a show, display or vision. Also spectacles referring to eyeglasses or goggles. Another is spectacular; dazzling, astonishing, or breathtaking. And my favorite, spectator. One who is a viewer, watcher, observer or witness. One can conclude that “spect” is included only in words that refer to looking, seeing, observing, and such.

So, respect really means: to see, again and again. Huh. Imagine that. And all this time we thought we knew what we were talking about.

The thing about respect is that its power lies in the pause…the wonder, interest, and curiosity about another human being (or plant, or animal, or earth, or thing, or or or). Respect is not about being nice to someone, taking them more seriously, or having unfounded admiration based on physical appearance, job status, age, race, religion, ethnicity… or anything in between. It’s actually about seeing someone…past it all, looking deeper at who they are, hearing what they’re really saying, learning where they’re really coming from, paying attention what they’re about…again and again…and again. Until maybe, just maybe you get it a little bit…enough to confidently say, “I respect you”.

So darlings, I ask you… Stop, look, and listen. Wonder about the words you’re using…and why. Wonder about the people around you. Plan to respect someone only if you are prepared to find out who they really are, and kindly embrace their human-being-ness. And then, the best part… gracefully cock your head to the side and wonder about who you really are… again and again. Respect yourselves my dears. And love it every second of it.

And that’s the thing about respect.

Love,